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Updated: August 26, 2024
I had been much amused, when the strain proper to the Winnebago courting flute was played to me on another instrument, at any one fancying it a melody; but now, when I heard the notes in their true tone and time, I thought it not unworthy comparison, in its graceful sequence, and the light flourish, at the close, with the sweetest bird-songs; and this, like the bird-song, is only practised to allure a mate.
So they went up the long, sunny street, deaf to the gay bird-songs, blind to the sunlight that slanted down through the arching elms and set the dewdrops to twinkling, only anxious to reach the safe refuge of the old house, and the motherly woman within it. They found her on the piazza watching for them, eager for the news the letter must bring.
Yet to all intents and purposes it is as if he shone for us alone. I suspect it requires a special gift of grace to enable one to hear the bird-songs; some new power must be added to the ear, or some obstruction removed. There are not only scales upon our eyes so that we do not see, there are scales upon our ears so that we do not hear.
Not wonderful that into the veins of those who nursed it, tending, watching its perpetual fertility, should be distilled a love so deep and subtle that they could not bear to leave it, to abandon its hills, and greenness, and bird-songs, and all the impress of their forefathers throughout the ages.
What possible manner of human beings, you wonder, can inhabit there, and what possible dreary manner of existence can they lead? But even in the most solitary places you are welcomed and sped on by a chorus of bird-songs. The hillsides resound with bird-songs continuously for the whole seven miles, and continuously, at this season, for the whole four-and-twenty hours.
The brown elm boughs which hung above the Common turned into trailing garlands of fresh green. Each walk revealed some change, or ended in some delightful discovery, trilliums, dog-tooth violets, apple- trees in blossom, or wild strawberries turning red. The wood flowers and mosses, even the birds and bird-songs, were new to our Western girls.
It is soft and very pretty; not so perfect a piece of art as the vesper sparrow's tune, few bird-songs are, but taking for its very oddity, and at the same time tender and sweet. More than one writer has described it as resembling the song of the white-throat.
Where the water tumbled over broken boulders and formed a little pool Dido stood to drink, and I stood, too, a minute listening to the bird-songs of which the wood was full.
The tones had all the sweetness and wildness they have when heard in June in our deep northern forests. It is certainly on of our most beautiful bird-songs, and Audubon's enthusiasm concerning its song, as he heard it in the wilds of Labrador, is not a bit extravagant. The song of the kinglet is the only characteristic that allies it to the wrens.
Soon, too, the gardens began to yield early vegetables. In the morning, instead of hearing the sound of guns, they were awakened by bird-songs, or by the crowing of cocks and the bleating of goats. These were pleasant sounds to the people of Fontanelle, for they brought memories of peaceful and prosperous days, and the promise of more to come.
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